PHP:
PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor,to process information and produce hypertext(HTML) as a result. PHP is an open-source development language that is extremely popular and is supported by the online web development community.
PHP programs run on a Web server,and serve Web pages to visitors on request.One of the key features of PHP is that you can embed PHP code within HTML Web pages,making it very easy for you to create dynamic content quickly. (DYNAMIC WEB PAGE:A dynamic Web page is a page whose contents can change automatically each time the page is viewed).
PHP is an intuitive, server side scripting language. Like any other scripting language it allows developers to build logic into the creation of web page content and handle data returned from a web browser. PHP also contains a number of extensions that make it easy to interact with databases, extracting data to be displayed on a web page and storing information entered by a web site visitor back into the database.
History:
PHP development began in 1994 when the Danish/Greenlandic programmer Rasmus Lerdorf initially created a set of Perl scripts he called "Personal Home Page Tools" to maintain his personal homepage.
Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, two Israeli developers at the Technion IIT, rewrote the parser in 1997 and formed the base of PHP 3, changing the language's name to the recursive initialism PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.
The PHP has many advantages:
- It is especially design for the web.
- It is a robust and proven platform.
- Server side programming for building dynamic websites which are easy to manage and run.
- Since this is an open-source, it is constantly upgraded through community development.
- The web application with PHP has a high security record.
- It is also highly customizable, and it is easily adaptable to suit for all uses.
- It runs on Apache web server, which runs on Windows, Solaris, Linux, UNIX and other server platforms to provide a flexible application hosting.
- PHP web application development offers a quick solution that is fast, reliable, affordable and secured.
- The web application in PHP reduces the web application development costs further.
What can PHP do?
PHP is mainly focused on server-side scripting, so you can do anything any other CGI program can do, such as collect form data, generate dynamic page content, or send and receive cookies. But PHP can do much more.
There are three main fields where PHP scripts are used.
Server-side scripting: This is the most traditional and main target field for PHP. You need three things to make this work. The PHP parser (CGI or server module), a webserver and a web browser. You need to run the webserver, with a connected PHP installation. You can access the PHP program output with a web browser, viewing the PHP page through the server.
Command line scripting:You can make a PHP script to run it without any server or browser. You only need the PHP parser to use it this way.
Scheduler (on Windows). These scripts can also be used for simple text processing tasks. See the section about Command line usage of PHP for more information.
Writing client-side GUI applications: PHP is probably not the very best language to write windowing applications, but if you know PHP very well, and would like to use some advanced PHP features in your client-side applications you can also use PHP-GTK to write such programs. You also have the ability to write cross-platform applications this way. PHP-GTK is an extension to PHP, not available in the main distribution.
Why we use PHP?
One of the best things about PHP is the large number of Internet Service Providers (ISP) and Web hosting companies that support PHP.Today thousand of developers are using PHP,and several million sites are reported to have PHP installed.
You can run PHP programs on Windows,Linux,Mac OS X and Solaris,among other.The P PHP engine can integrate with all common Web Server,including Apache,Internet Information Server(IIS).
The PHP language was originally implemented as an interpreter. Several compilers have been developed which decouple the PHP language from the interpreter. Advantages of compilation include better execution speed, obfuscation, static analysis, and improved interoperability with code written in other languages.
Process involved in running a PHP script on a Web-server
Step1: A visitor requests a Web page by typing the page URL into the browser’s address bar or by clicking a link.
Step2:The Web server recognizes that the requested URL is a PHP script,and instructs the PHP engine to process that and run the script.
Step3:The script runs,and when it’s finished it sends an HTML page to the Web Browser,which the visitor then sees on their screen.
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